speeding up a Crescendo/PCI G4 |
May, 14, 2003 1:06 AM |
szavo_ii |
I finally successfully installed OS X on my PM8500 with a Crescendo/PCI G4 upgrade. By the way, I struggled at first with XPF, then bought Sonnet's installer only to find it no help. Sonnet tech support's advice failed to help me install OS X using their own installer, but it worked when I went back to using XPF! Now my question is how to speed up boot time as well as other processor tasks. I'm a neophyte at this so have been scared off by the L2cacheconfig. IS this something I need to install to speed things up? Is there anything else I should do? |
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RE: speeding up a Crescendo/PCI G4 |
May, 30, 2003 9:45 PM |
gabb |
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My PTP is pretty good with a Sonnet G4 800 card, yes video capture is a little slow but ok for now. I think this fall we will see a lot of change in the MAC platform, better chips, better OS etc. I can eassily afford a new Mac but I have little space at my apt (in NYC) so not much room so..... I use an IBM at work pretty hot, I mean big difference in Illustrator but Photoshop runs similar to my PTP. Its just the GUI, scrolling and moving things around the screen that bothers me on my PTP. Under OS 9 though its very fast. Check out this website for brand new Macs for real cheap www.applepurchaseprogram.com u can get new G4 tower for under US$ 1000 Over all i think it was a good investment to get the SOnnet G4 card even though its only for 6-7 months (before I get a new Mac) |
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RE: speeding up a Crescendo/PCI G4 |
May, 30, 2003 9:28 PM |
terrancew_hod |
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I know what you mean about the slow gui, it was really annoying watching windows open and close. Basic tasks were fine but when it came to video it really sucks. I ended up building a "agp-based mac in a pc case" solution to handle that stuff. Hopefully they'll optimize the video routines in Panther.... |
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RE: speeding up a Crescendo/PCI G4 |
May, 25, 2003 4:51 AM |
paul_findley |
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I don't know how much you want to spend on the PTP or 9500, but my 7500 with G4/800, ATI Radeon Mac Ed, and U2LD UW SCSI and 10krpm LVD drives, seems snappier on the GUI and everyday tasks (web, office stuff) than a new eMac 700 (G4). But for anything that sends lots of data across the system bus (e.g., video capture or editing or DVD viewing), the eMac wins hands down, with its 100MHz bus and SDRAM. It actually will play full screen DVD w/o stutter and pauses, while the 7500 won't quite do it. |
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RE: speeding up a Crescendo/PCI G4 |
May, 17, 2003 8:52 AM |
jeglin |
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thanks twoolley, I now have a sanity check anyway. Yeah, performance is in the eye of the beholder. I have an iBook/800 and it routinely outperforms this PTP (and I'm often dissappointed with the iBook!), except for OpenGL, and disk with my ATA133 in the PTP. I wouldn't mind it if the user interface wasn't so damn slow; that alone is a big part of the perception of speed, and real to boot since most of the time spent on a computer is interacting with the user interface. My only hope now is that 10.3 brings real speed improvements, and that Ryan can update XPF for it! Thanks! |
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RE: speeding up a Crescendo/PCI G4 |
May, 17, 2003 1:37 AM |
twoolley |
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Jeglin- I seldom run XBench or pay much attention to the scores since I know they are influenced by background processes, other installed hardware polling, etc. I ran it tonight to compare with your results with Quartz Extreme off, but did not restart - just quit any running applications. To be thorough I suppose one should restart and repair permissions also. XBench Scores without Quartz Extreme 5/16/03 OS 10.2.6 704 MB RAM Overall: 40.19 CPU: 65.20 Thread: 49.85 Memory: 16.39 Quartz Graphics: 40.75 OpenGL Graphics: 90.29 User Interface: 39.69 Disk: 58.97 I note that many of my scores without QE are worse than either of your results. Nevertheless I am still pleased with this performance. Perhaps if I were a gamer I would want/need the latest Mac with a high performance video card. As it is, I am satisfied. |
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RE: speeding up a Crescendo/PCI G4 |
May, 17, 2003 12:21 AM |
jeglin |
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OK, part of my problem is/was Sonnet Tuneup - I had 1.2.5, needed 1.2.6. Now my L1,2,3 caches show up in ASP (16k, 256k, 1M). I also reinstalled XPF extensions. So I should be as fast as possible. Without/with quartz extreme, here are my XBench numbers (10.2.6, fresh restart for both, all other things equal): (have no idea how this will line up in columns for easy viewing) -QE +QE Overall: 43 37 CPU: 70 61 Thread: 49 47 Memory: 16 15 Quartz Graphics: 52 35 Open GL: 89 86 User Interface: 48 35 Disk: 71 69 twoolley (or anyone else with an XPF system), how do these numbers compare with yours? (I can't see any reason to be running QE!) |
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RE: speeding up a Crescendo/PCI G4 |
May, 16, 2003 11:10 PM |
jeglin |
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twoolley - sounds too good to be true for me - I have an identical system (I say 9500 a lot, even though it is PTP). I have Radeon 7000 also, and Sonnet Tempo 133, Sonnet G4/ 800, so we are really close. Memory is 704Meg, and currently 10.2.6. ASP says "L2 cache size 0K" and there is no mention of L3 anywhere. I used Sonnet Tuneup 1.2.6 but I did not reinstall XPF extensions, I'll go do that now, but what am I missing? I'm especially worried about the report of 0k on L2. XBench says nothing about either cache. I want your speed! What does baseline XBench show on your system? |
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RE: speeding up a Crescendo/PCI G4 |
May, 16, 2003 7:15 PM |
twoolley |
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jeglin- My system: Sonnet G4 800/PowerTower Pro/Radeon 7000/Sonnet Tempo Trio With every version of OS X.2 Apple System Profiler correctly indentifies the size of the Sonnet L2 & L3 cache. I do use Sonnet Tuneup and reinstall XPF extensions afterwards. This I believe is a good indication that the caches are enabled. Also I have excellent speed with all applications (scrolling is a little slow with some), and I can have any number of applications open in the Dock at any time without slow down. Safari, Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. just scream with altivec enabled also. |
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RE: speeding up a Crescendo/PCI G4 |
May, 16, 2003 5:47 PM |
jeglin |
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and how do we know that the Sonnet Tuneup enables the L3 cache? No utility that I know of reports L3 status (please enlighten me). But during boot (in verbose mode) I do see reference to what looks like some initialization of the L2 -and- L3 caches. I've actually always hoped that my L3 was -not- initialized successfully yet, because if it is, this is the fastest that my G4/800/9500 will ever get, and it's not useable much IMO unless I'm just doing a single app and simple stuff. IOW, I can make it crawl without much effort. Just another 20% percent and I would be satisfied, although I know there's not much chance of that. |
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RE: speeding up a Crescendo/PCI G4 |
May, 14, 2003 6:28 PM |
powderhaus |
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go download the sonnet tune up (yes it workd with XPF) and run it, when it finishes open XPF (from OSX) and it will tell you that you can only reinstall the extentions. So go to the file menu and reinstall the extentions then restart, it should be alot quicker. Good Luck, Jim |
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RE: speeding up a Crescendo/PCI G4 |
May, 14, 2003 2:37 AM |
john.england |
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Not really. As long as the Sonnet software enabled the L2 and L3 caches, you are set. |
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